Equivalent varieties for culture-specific words in Chinese-English dictionaries

Abstract Given the popularity of Chinese culture among learners of Chinese as a Foreign language (CFL), a quality bilingual dictionary is of significance to provide cultural information for language activities. The present study collects a group of typical Chinese culture-specific words (CSWs) and examines the adoption of different equivalent varieties in four Chinese-English dictionaries when dealing with those CSWs. It shows that firstly, while borrowing turns out to be the least used way in the bilingual dictionaries, a combination of equivalents (either translational or explanatory) plus explanation is the major means adopted by Chinese bilingual lexicographers. Secondly, as compared to the dictionaries for general purposes, those intended for CFL learners prefer to include more CSWs and provide a larger amount of encyclopedic explanation for user’s orientation. Finally, the inappropriateness of some translational or explanatory equivalents suggests the necessity for a close scrutiny of various aspects in the process of equivalent identification, including sense discrimination between different TL words, context information of the potential equivalents, and cultural connotation of each constituent part of a TL equivalent. It is hoped that these findings may contribute to the improvement of Chinese-English learner’s dictionaries in the future.